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> Toyoda also believes there will be “tremendous shortages” of lithium and battery grade nickel in the next five to 10 years, leading to production and supply c

by ncann 4y ago

> Toyoda also believes there will be “tremendous shortages” of lithium and battery grade nickel in the next five to 10 years, leading to production and supply chain problems. This is the main reason why I believe the current all-electric goals are too ambitious and not practical.

CameronNemo 4y ago
Lithium is interesting because we could get really creative in how/where we get it. For example, GM is planning to buy Lithium extracted from the Salton Sea. [1] Nickel and Cobalt are, IMO, tougher to solve for. Nickel is rich in places that are not North America, which will run up against certain domestic sourced stipulations in EV subsidies... We have one nickel mine as of 2021 and it produces far less than the Eurasian mines.[2] I think an EV future will really depend on innovative battery chemistries like LiFePO4.[3] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/the-salton-sea-could-produce-the-worlds-greenest-lithium.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/the-salton-sea-could-produce... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284604/us-nickel-mine-production/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284604/us-nickel-mine-p... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Nobody questions if these metals exist or not. But developing a mine in North America takes 5-10 years and often longer. If you want to have a real mine that might actual produce lithium in North America look at Thacker Pass. The Salton Sea is mostly marketing, its totally unproven technology not anywhere remotely close to production. There have been countless junior minors who have made great promises about lithium production in the last 10 years and virtually all of them have failed. It will take much, much longer then most of these companies say to produce anything close to battery grade lithium. Lithium is really tricky to get to the right quality, and each mine needs to go threw a multi year very process to go threw valuation at every car and battery maker. So even if you have a mine partially operating, it takes years and years after that until your lithium might actually show up in a car. Sodium and LFP batteries do help. But LFP still needs lithium and the massive production facilities already built for NMC and NCA can not just be changed. This is a bigger problem then people realize, specially lithium. After all these years there is still only a handful (less then 5) of companies that produce it at the required grade. And of those many are not expanding fast.
CodeWriter23 4y ago
That, and available generation capacity.
MaKey 4y ago
There will be sodium-ion batteries in EVs too. Niu is going to launch a two-wheeler with a sodium-ion battery next year [0]. [0] https://www.electrive.com/2022/08/08/niu-to-debut-two-wheeler-with-sodium-ion-batteries-in-2023/ https://www.electrive.com/2022/08/08/niu-to-debut-two-wheele...
- thehappypm 4y ago
  Will < did. These threads are always full of companies just two years out.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Translation, Toyota has not yet secured access to resources because it has been dragging its feet making the necessary investments. Other manufacturers have in fact been making such investments and are growing production volumes at a nice rate. Toyota will eventually have to choose between letting market share slip or investing to catch up as more countries are starting to see sales dominated by EVs. We're talking about a company that has been talking about hydrogen cars and is still pretending that they are going to do that at scale; despite no evidence at all of that in the form of production capacity and infrastructure related investments. Speak of supply chain problems! Where is the hydrogen even going to come from? And where's the distribution network for that? And how many hydrogen cars did Toyota actually ship so far? Hint, the volume of their very low number of compliance EVs in places like China is actually higher. They've actually already produced more EVs than hydrogen cars. I doubt those numbers will ever turn around for them. Toyoda sounds like a broken record just rehashing the same excuses over and over again as to why they are late in a market where other companies are raking in really fat profits on EVs that seems to be going through some exponential growth.
- torginus 4y ago
  Hydrogen makes sense for semi-trucks and cargo transport - which are incidentally responsible for a huge chuck of ICE emissions. That means even if we can't quite build out the infrastructure for civilian use, and the fuel cells are too expensive for the average Joe, we can still convert semi trucks to hydrogen use.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    Even there, battery electric trucks are already selling in just about every weight class of trucks you can name. Hydrogen is a very long shot there and the (very) few hydrogen trucks on the road have neither range nor cost advantages over battery electric. And of course they can't go out of range from the very limited hydrogen distribution points.

by ncann 4y ago

CameronNemo 4y ago

Lithium is interesting because we could get really creative in how/where we get it. For example, GM is planning to buy Lithium extracted from the Salton Sea. [1] Nickel and Cobalt are, IMO, tougher to solve for. Nickel is rich in places that are not North America, which will run up against certain domestic sourced stipulations in EV subsidies... We have one nickel mine as of 2021 and it produces far less than the Eurasian mines.[2] I think an EV future will really depend on innovative battery chemistries like LiFePO4.[3] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/the-salton-sea-could-produce-the-worlds-greenest-lithium.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/the-salton-sea-could-produce... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284604/us-nickel-mine-production/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284604/us-nickel-mine-p... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate

panick21_ 4y ago
Nobody questions if these metals exist or not. But developing a mine in North America takes 5-10 years and often longer. If you want to have a real mine that might actual produce lithium in North America look at Thacker Pass. The Salton Sea is mostly marketing, its totally unproven technology not anywhere remotely close to production. There have been countless junior minors who have made great promises about lithium production in the last 10 years and virtually all of them have failed. It will take much, much longer then most of these companies say to produce anything close to battery grade lithium. Lithium is really tricky to get to the right quality, and each mine needs to go threw a multi year very process to go threw valuation at every car and battery maker. So even if you have a mine partially operating, it takes years and years after that until your lithium might actually show up in a car. Sodium and LFP batteries do help. But LFP still needs lithium and the massive production facilities already built for NMC and NCA can not just be changed. This is a bigger problem then people realize, specially lithium. After all these years there is still only a handful (less then 5) of companies that produce it at the required grade. And of those many are not expanding fast.

CodeWriter23 4y ago

That, and available generation capacity.

MaKey 4y ago

There will be sodium-ion batteries in EVs too. Niu is going to launch a two-wheeler with a sodium-ion battery next year [0]. [0] https://www.electrive.com/2022/08/08/niu-to-debut-two-wheeler-with-sodium-ion-batteries-in-2023/ https://www.electrive.com/2022/08/08/niu-to-debut-two-wheele...

thehappypm 4y ago
Will < did. These threads are always full of companies just two years out.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Translation, Toyota has not yet secured access to resources because it has been dragging its feet making the necessary investments. Other manufacturers have in fact been making such investments and are growing production volumes at a nice rate. Toyota will eventually have to choose between letting market share slip or investing to catch up as more countries are starting to see sales dominated by EVs. We're talking about a company that has been talking about hydrogen cars and is still pretending that they are going to do that at scale; despite no evidence at all of that in the form of production capacity and infrastructure related investments. Speak of supply chain problems! Where is the hydrogen even going to come from? And where's the distribution network for that? And how many hydrogen cars did Toyota actually ship so far? Hint, the volume of their very low number of compliance EVs in places like China is actually higher. They've actually already produced more EVs than hydrogen cars. I doubt those numbers will ever turn around for them. Toyoda sounds like a broken record just rehashing the same excuses over and over again as to why they are late in a market where other companies are raking in really fat profits on EVs that seems to be going through some exponential growth.

torginus 4y ago
Hydrogen makes sense for semi-trucks and cargo transport - which are incidentally responsible for a huge chuck of ICE emissions. That means even if we can't quite build out the infrastructure for civilian use, and the fuel cells are too expensive for the average Joe, we can still convert semi trucks to hydrogen use.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Even there, battery electric trucks are already selling in just about every weight class of trucks you can name. Hydrogen is a very long shot there and the (very) few hydrogen trucks on the road have neither range nor cost advantages over battery electric. And of course they can't go out of range from the very limited hydrogen distribution points.